1950s

Turn Again Home (1951) by Ruby Ferguson

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I bought Turn Again Home (1951) by Ruby Ferguson when I was in Inverness a couple of years ago – largely on the strength of having enjoyed Lady Rose and Mrs Memmary about 20 years ago, but… I think I’d have bought a book with this cover regardless of who wrote it. This illustration sums up more or less everything I’m looking for in a novel. A big old house, clearly falling apart? Some people in period clothing who are clearly drawn to it? Yes pleeeease. I was prompted to put it closer to the top of my tbr pile when Gina reviewed it so glowingly.

As it turns out, the house plays a relatively minor role in the novel. But it is perhaps emblematic of what the characters are experiencing: Wright, Vida, Hope and Daphne are travelling back to the northern mill town where they grew up. The fictional town of Hockworth, in West Riding of Yorkshire, is dominated by the mill and its industry, and hints of modernity have done little to change that. But for these four siblings – technically three siblings, because Daphne is a sort-of-adopted-but-not-actually addition to the family – Hockworth is a distant memory. They have all left home behind, and only their brother Haigh remains in Hockworth.

Four of the people who stood waiting and shivering on this February afternoon, while the Bradford to Hockworth local train seemed as though it would never come, had a look of being out of place in their surroundings. It was difficult to say exactly how they were unlike their fellow-passengers, for the difference was subtle, and might be described as the look of metropolitans among provincials. On the man and the three women who paced the platform and occasionally glanced anxiously at wrist-watches, you could see overlaid, like the patina on old furniture, that something which was London and which Snebley Heights – never fear! – recognised and scorned. Their clipped voices, borne on the wind, were like the voices of foreigners.

The reason they’ve all travelled back is for an inheritance from their grandmother. The house on the cover, though I was sad by how little time we spent in its environs. But that is because there was so much else to pack into the story…

The four characters are drawn in slightly broad brushstrokes. Vida and Daphne are fashionable, smart women married to wealthy men, and who most openly look down on Hockworth. Vida is sharpest and most disdainful, and Daphne is something of a shadow of her – she reminded me of the way Kitty emulates Lydia in Pride and Prejudice, though what is being imitated is different. Wright is a bachelor too busy with London business to have time for family, and similarly considers his father’s mill-ownership to be rather provincial and very old-fashioned. Hope’s name is rather on the nose, because she is the optimistic, kind one. Working as a teacher, she is the only one with residual fondness for their home.

I’ll be honest – halfway through Turn Again Home, I was a bit disappointed. It was enjoyable enough, and the writing was good, but the characters were a bit one-note. I could see exactly where this sort of story was going. It seemed inevitable that, one by one, they’d be beguiled by nostalgia and the honest goodness of provincial folk, letting their London airs and graces fall away. It was particularly predictable to have all their old servants, and other working-class characters, be mindlessly delighted to see them again. Every working-class figure in Turn Again Home seemed to exist only to hero-worship the memory of the upper-class characters, without a streak of any negativity or individuality in them. I was enjoying the book, but wasn’t very impressed by it.

And yet… things changed. And I think that was largely the introduction of Jessie. For a chapter or so, we are fully back in the past – in the ardent, forceful courtship of Wright with Jessie, the daughter of a mill-hand. Wright’s parents are not snobs – the community seems to be far better integrated than would be possible in a larger town – but they don’t trust his youthful infatuation to last, and they know that Jessie will be the one to suffer. And they are right.

When Wright and Jessie meet again, in present day, we see a much more interesting character than any of the other working-class people. Or, indeed, than any of the upper-class ones. Her mix of regret, contentedness, dignity, and reproach is done extremely well. The strongest of the stories in Turn Again Home is about the ways Wright will or will not be able to reconnect with the woman he wronged.

Once I’d been hooked on that story, the others got me too. I was right in one respect – of course the honest charm of Hockworth would overcome these London cynics – but I was wrong in others. It wasn’t as clear-cut as that, and there were moments of surprise in the narrative. More than that, though, the characters filled out. Their one-note responses to Hockworth revealed hidden depths and complexities, and the plot became extremely compelling. I raced through the final 150 pages, keen to know what would happen to each member of the family, and unsure whether I wanted reality or fantasy to dominate. Ferguson ends up finding a combination of the two that was much more satisfactory than I’d anticipated.

As Gina said, it’s not an easy novel to track down. I was very fortunate to find it in the wild. But it is on Internet Archive, if that is your cup of tea! I’ll certainly be open to reading more by Ferguson, should I be lucky enough to stumble across them, and will make sure I don’t judge the book too quickly.

The Visited (1959) by Joan O’Donovan

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The Visited by Joan O'Donovan - cover with bright pink header, gothicky font, and melodramatic illustration of woman looming over a man

The Visited (1959) by Joan O’Donovan is yet another book that I’ve read because of a post by Brad. Well, if he starts a post by talking about ‘misfit spinsters’, you know I’m going to get hold of it, don’t you? Of the various novels he covers in the article, this one appealed the most – the ill-fated attempts of an ageing spinster to find a husband and, thereby, escape her domineering mother. When my copy arrived, it had puff quotes by writers as various as J.B. Priestley, Penelope Mortimer and Elizabeth Jenkins on the back. Here’s how it opens:

In spite of the revival of Irish, the new hotel was called the Magnifique, perhaps because there was no word in that ancient language to do it justice. One’s first impression was of hysteria. It was full of pink light and chromium, and so imposing that it destroyed entirely the proportions of the Georgian square.

This is the background for a holiday that Englishwoman Edith Crannick is taking in Dublin. Her first mention is a one-sentence paragraph: ‘Edith Crannick was as miserable as hell.’ She was, we quickly learn, ‘bored and lonely’. Brad’s review describes her as being in her mid-thirties, though an early paragraph says: ‘At intervals, Edith reminded herself that she was fifty-three and old enough to know better.’ I’m going to come onto ages later, because they confused me a bit.

Bored and lonely as she is, Edith is not initially particularly excited to meet Leopold Darkin. He is also English but a rung or two below her on the social scale, or at least he seems satisfied with his social standing where she aspires to better. Having instantly dismissed her as unattractive and not worth bothering about, he finds that beggars can’t be choosers and approaches her out of sheer boredom. It is not an auspicious start:

He looked round for Edith, and when Edith saw him coming towards her she bristled. She had noticed him, and she didn’t like the look of him. She disliked the way he stuck out his elbows and rubbed his hands. She disliked the way he hovered and smiled, and, even more, the way he frowned and looked important. He shouted at waiters and he looked at women’s legs. In fact, he was a little pip-squeak and she saw no reason why she should talk to him.

It isn’t very promising, is it? Well, that was on page seven. By page ten, she is giggling at his jokes and somehow they have charmed each other. The relationship is cemented by him resucing her from drowning in the sea – O’Donovan leaves it just about unclear whether it was a suicide attempt on Edith’s part – and they are devoted to each other from then on. As luck would have it, they even live a few streets apart from one another back in England. There are subtle elements to The Visited, but the sudden gear shift from distaste to love is not among them. As with quite a lot of the novel, I felt myself wishing that O’Donovan had been a bit wiser with her talents. She is in many ways an excellent writer – but she hangs this writing on a plot that is pretty structurally unsound in places.

But the real meat of the novel is back in England. Leopold lives with his daughter Caroline – not quite young enough to be adorable, but not old enough to be too much of a problem either. His wife, he explains, has run off and abandoned him. The divorce hasn’t come through, but it’s a matter of time and the sort of awkward arrangements that were necessary to provide ‘evidence’ for a divorce in the mid-century. Edith is content to wait… for now.

Back at home, Edith’s mother is indeed domineering, but not in the sense of shouting or putting her foot down. Rather, she plays up her vulnerabilities and helplessness. Some of it is clearly real, and some is very much affected. Whatever the occasional flimsiness of her plot, O’Donovan is very good on character, and particularly the ways that people manipulate one another. The reader becomes as infuriated as Edith with Mrs Crannick, who is quietly determined to keep Edith at hand and never finishes a sentence or thought.

Mrs Crannick addressed herself to Leopold:

“When you get to my age, you know, you don’t really sleep. I haven’t slept for… But I can’t complain. Are these for me? How very… No, I can’t complain; I’ve had more than my three score years and… I’ll be eighty-six next birthday, Mr…?”

“This is Mr Darkin, Mother.” Edither whispered to Leopold, “Hold the fort, darling; I shan’t be a minute.”

She wetn out to the kitchen, shutting the door after her.

“I don’t recall the name. Have we met? I’m afraid Ede gets very cross with me. I forget, and… I’m stupid, you know. It must be very irritating. Such an intelligent… a real career girl. I’m afraid I get on her nerves…”

You understand the type, I am sure. And it brings me onto ages. If Mrs Crannick is 85, then it makes sense for Edith to be 53. A little while later, Caroline thinks: ‘She liked to know people’s ages. You got some surprises. For instance, Daddie was only twenty-seven, even though he was going bald.’ Firstly, I was more or less bald at 27, Caroline, so lower your voice. But secondly – is this true? Is this a joke on O’Donovan’s part, that Leopold has lied to his daughter about his age? Or is this really a novel about the love between a 27-year-old man and a 53-year-old woman, because that would be a much more unusual and radical approach. I’m leaning towards it being a joke, because surely otherwise the age gap would have been a central plot point?

Gradually – but not that gradually – The Visited becomes a different sort of novel. This is not about unlikely lovers battling the expectations of her mother and the jealousies of his wife. It is a much sadder, in ways more predictable, plot: a woman being lied to by a man. Edith knows that marriage to Leopold is her final hope for stability and independence from her mother. Leopold knows… that he has not told Edith the whole truth, and it is increasingly unlikely that she will find that out.

Again, O’Donovan is very good at the manipulation between characters, and there are sharp moments of disillusion. I loved this line: ‘She looked at him curiously. She had almost forgotten that, at their first meeting, he had reminded her of her mother.’

Ultimately, O’Donovan doesn’t seem to know how to maintain subtlety. The plot of the novel descends into moments that would fit better in a schlocky Gothic horror than in a thoughtful novel about hope and deceit. I gradually realised why it appeared in a cover as garish as this one. Some of the expectations of genre created by the cover seep into the plot.

This was O’Donovan’s first novel, and it feels to me like the output of an excellent writer who hadn’t yet worked out how to control her work. Now, of course, those three illustrious authors quoted on the back disagreed with me. And you may find the meeting of genres – the instant-falling-in-love combined with more melancholy, philosophical takes on ageing – is more to your taste. I really enjoyed reading The Visited, but felt continually haunted by the rather better book that was hiding somewhere within this one.

Two wintery novellas

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I hope you’ve all had a lovely Christmas! Perhaps I should apologise for being quite an intermittent blogger for the past month or two, but those sorts of apologies always presuppose that anybody has noticed! Let’s not flatter ourselves that your festive season was spoiled by my absence.

And since the festive season is not over, I wanted to share a couple of wintery novellas that I read recently. It’s a bit late to get in the mood for Christmas, but I think these would be rather lovely at any point during this time of year.

Lanterns Across the Snow (1987) by Susan Hill

There is a real luxury to this book – or at least to my 1987 edition from Michael Joseph. It’s less than 80 pages, but the wide margins, hardback cover, and occasional woodcut-esque illustraiionss by Kathleen Lindsley make it feel precious. I don’t doubt that it was designed to appeal as a Christmas present – and that is exactly what it was for me in 2019. This is how it opens:

Last night, the snow fell. And then I began to remember. I remembered all the things that I had forgotten. Or so it had seemed.

But not forgotten after all. They were all there, stored away like treasures.

Last night, the snow fell.

Fanny is an old woman. There is nobody left who remembers her childhood – which must be around the turn of the century. But she remembers – and she settles down to reflect on one particular Christmas, when she was nine years old.

Her father was a rector, and so Christmas is a time where the whole household is busy: not just the busyness of celebration and family, but the high point of the church calendar. While there will be a church-full on Christmas Day, the first day that Fanny remembers is Christmas Eve – and she slips down the path between rectory and church to join in a service that her father is giving to one man, the verger. Nobody else has attended, but Fanny’s presence is noticed by her father, even if he doesn’t comment. The words of Evensong are there in the dialogue – “O Lord, save they people / And bless thine inheritance” – that have a beautiful timelessness to them. They are words I say and hear once a month in our local church still, and they are woven into Fanny’s memories as the rhythm of everyday life – and communication with a much-loved, now long-gone, Father.

Over Christmas Day itself, two important things happen to people in the parish. A baby is born; an elderly parishioner dies. We see them through the excited, cautious, wondering perspective of young Fanny – filtered quietly through the distanct perspective of old Fanny. Though birth and death are, of course, defining experiences, this particular birth and death do not define Fanny. These are important things that once happened to other people, near her – remembered as a particularly significant Christmas, but moreso as representative of a world that she once lived in that is far away now.

Lanterns Across the Snow is a simple story, simply told, but more than the sum of its parts. Hill laces it beautifully with emotion and reflection that is too subtle to be simply nostalgia – and yet, nostalgia is the best word I can think for it. The novella is moving and poignant. There are no surprise twists or sudden ironies. It is a beautiful little tale and perfect for a cold winter evening.

Snowflake (1952) by Paul Gallico

There is something about Michael Joseph and beautiful little wintery books, as they also published this 64-page novella by Paul Gallico. If you have much familiarity with Gallico, you’ll know that he can veer in different directions. Some of his books are fey, whimsical, and maybe even sickly sweet. Some are vicious, dark, even shocking. And many combine elements of the two in a way that feels distinctly Gallicoian.

Here’s how the story opens:

The Snowflake was born on a cold, winter’s day far up in the sky, many miles above the earth.

Her birth took place in the heart of a grey cloud that sswept over the land driven by icy winds.

It all came about from one moment to the next. At first there was only the swollen cloud moving over the tops of the mountains. Then it began to snow. And where but a second before there had been nothing, now there was Snowflake and all her brothers and sisters falling from the sky.

The rest of the novella follows Snowflake’s life – and Gallico does lean into anthropomorphism. Depending on your taste, he may lean too far into it. It’s this element of the story that brings both the fey and the occasional shock. Snowflake finds herself lying on the ground, enjoying the beautiful surroundings – then in sharp pain when a sledge cuts through her. Being piled on by further layers of snow crushes her shape and makes it hard to breath. Respite seems to come in being massed into the form of a snowman – but it is also humiliating and sore.

Who would ever think of snowflakes feeling pain? There is much that is about beauty, performance and sparkle – the sort of things you might expect from a Disneyfication of snow – but Gallico insists upon the rough with the smooth. Melting is next – but don’t worry, it isn’t armageddon for little Snowflake. Instead, she meets Raindrop in a stream. They marry (!) and have children (!!) and despite how ridiculous that sounds, there is something curiously magical in the way Gallico describes their contented time living together in a lake.

But this is temporary. They eventually are siphoned out of the lake – and, worst of worst fears, used in a firefighter’s hose to be sprayed into a fire. And so the exciting, unexpected story continues.

If someone described Snowflake to me, I’m not sure I would rush towards it. But Gallico is so unusual and excellent a writer that he persuadses the reader – this reader, at least – to come along for the ride in the most unusual of stories. It is curiously emotional, and he whirls together the beautiful, poignant, fanciful and dark into one surprisingly successful mix.

Don’t be fooled by that lovely cover. This isn’t a story for children. Rather, it ends up being a strangely affecting take on the highs and lows of almost any life – and the hope for satisfaction when it is all looked back upon as one whole.

For Flute and Piccolo by E.H. Lomer

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One of the loveliest parts of being Series Consultant for the British Library Women Writers series is getting to speak to the relatives of authors we’re republishing. When the extraordinarily good The Spring Begins by Katherine Dunning was brought back to life, I got to have a phone call with Dunning’s great niece. Did I know, she asked, that Dunning’s sister also wrote books? Then, so kindly, she sent me not only a pile of Dunning’s novels – but one by Dunning’s sister (her grandmother): For Flute and Piccolo (1955) by E.H. Lomer.

At the centre of the novel are Alice and her adult (or almost adult) children – Harold, Stephen, Jenny. Alice is a widow who is not as well-off as she once was, and she borrows money from a dear, long-standing friend, Mark. The first conflict in the novel is the dispute this occasions between Mark (and Alice) and Harold. He is staid, fiercely respectable, abiding by rules that he believes must be stringently enforced upon others, whatever the cost – though these rules derive as much from pride as decency. And other rules, as we shall learn in the novel, are not rigorously followed.

“So you wish to repay what you consider your mother has borrowed from me – is that it?” he asked.

“Precisely,” said Harold, but he was on his guard.

“Can you afford it?” said Mark, hitting below the belt.

Harold’s face grew pink and offended and a different note entered his voice. Now that he was no longer sparring with Mark but stated his case in a way that carried conviction.

“What I certainly cannot afford is to have it said that I cannot support my own mother – that she must turn to someone else for money on which to live.”

Alice moved uneasily. “I hadn’t thought of it like that,” she admitted, and threw a look of apology towards Mark.

“Neither had I,” said Mark, but without apology.

I love the small moments that mark Lomer out as a thoughtful stylist. She often does those little twists – like ‘but without apology’ – that do so much to elevate the writing, and to give an arch wit to depictions of the dynamics between characters. It’s that sort of sharp writing that really sets apart books like For Flute and Piccolo from the many other novels that look at the conflicts of domestic life in small communities.

The dynamic of Alice and Mark is also interesting. I wished the novel had a little more of Alice, and a little more of her psychology, for she plays the role of so many older woman in novels of the period (and in life) – considered chiefly in the light of mother and wife, and undervalued or disregarded for any other personality or autonomy that she might have. But – and I enjoyed this choice by Lomer – Mark also plays the role often played by women in novels. Throughout the anxieties and disagreements of the central family, Mark is the calm bystander – wise, listening, keeping his views concealed until they are asked for. He is perhaps the emotional heart of the novel, but also the most reticent.

Harold is the opposite of reticent. He is a very successful villain – because he is so frustratingly believable. Like so many naturalistic villains, he is able to twist anybody else’s words and actions into a slight against himself, meanwhile never considering or caring how his words and actions impact anybody else. He reminded me of the mother in E.F. Benson’s Mr Teddy. Here he is with his longsuffering (but not contentedly) wife, May:

“I really wouldn’t have liked to start my tea without you, Harold.”

“I can’t see why not.”

“But I always wait for you,” she said, her voice rising.

“Well, there’s really no necessity,” said Harold, getting impatient. He looked around the table, waiting for his tea, and because there was nothing else to do, May poured it out for him. She poured herself a cup, too, and the silence gathered. No one would talk now until Harold was satisfied, and whether May herself had anything to eat or not would be unnoticed by him. Perversely she ate nothing, hoping he would notice, knowing he wouldn’t, feeling aggrieved.

Isn’t that final sentence perfect – about the petty points that are disregarded by the one they’re aimed at, and the resentment that is tangled up in the useless action? Lomer is very good on the simmering fury of small feuds.

She is equally enjoyable on the possibility of happiness on a similarly small scale. The title comes from a scene in the novel between Mark and Lanty, the latter being enamoured with Jenny (and I believe Jenny and Lanty are depicted on the novel’s cover.) Lanty explains what he is hoping for:

“So that’s your idea of comfort?”

“What’s yours, Lanty?”

Mark asked the question smiling, but Lanty took him seriously.

“A home of my own,” he said after a moment, “and someone waiting for me. The kettle singing on the hearth and a wide arm-chair. Bright fires in winter, open windows in summer – ordinary things, Mr Hillary.”

“I see,” said Mark.

“Just ordinary things,” said Lanty again. “Everyday lives. A tune for flute and piccolo, if you get my meaning. No big drums.”

I’m never sure this sort of title works well – something that needs explaining, or a quote that doesn’t make sense out of context (I am famed for my dislike for Barbara Pym’s titles The Sweet Dove Died and Some Tame Gazelle). Perhaps Lomer gets away with it because the title somehow conveys the tone of the novel, even if you don’t know quite what she’s referring to.

Writing about animosity and petty resentment is perhaps easier than writing about infatuation, and there are occasional moments in the romantic storyline that land a bit falsely (e.g. ‘”I love the very ground you walk on,” said Lanty, carried away’) – though ‘carried away’ at least makes a nod to the jarring tone. But Lomer is overall so successful at her depiction of the emotional highs and lows of unambitious lives. On a grand scale, the disagreements of the family make no difference – but, to the people involved, they are everything. She conveys that beautifully.

As I’ve written above, what makes a small-scale domestic novel stand out is the writing – and I think the sharp precision of Lomer’s turns of phrase that make For Flute and Piccolo stand out. And this, of course, in turn gives the characters greater reality and distinction.

In a battle of the sisters, Katherine Dunning’s The Spring Begins is still the greater book, in my eyes – but I consider it a masterpiece. For Flute and Piccolo might not be quite a masterpiece, but it is extremely good. The sort of sharply written, keenly plotted novel with memorable, individual characters that you could easily imagine being a modern classic – and yet, because of the vagaries of publishing, has been nearly forgotten. I’m so glad that I had the chance to read it – and should you ever stumble across it, I think you’d enjoy doing so too.

The Happy Ending by Leo Walmsley – #ABookADayInMay Day 2

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The Happy Ending (1957) is the third book in Leo Walmsley’s trilogy of autobiographical novels – starting with Love in the Sun and followed (rather later) by The Golden Waterwheel. Clicking on those links will take you to my enthusiastic reviews, and I’ve read the whole trilogy within four years, which feels like breakneck speed considering how often I leave sequels until I’ve long forgotten the original.

As with the previous two books, the focus of the plot is on the unnamed narrator and his wife Dain buying and renovating a property. In Cornwall, it was a seaside shack. In Yorkshire, it was a bigger house with ambitions for a huge waterwheel. In The Happy Ending, they are in Wales – having bought, sight unseen, a sizeable property (and farmland) called Castle Druid that is in total disrepair. The Second World War has started and their Yorkshire home has been requisitioned, so this is something of an emergency plunge into the dark.

In the first book, it was just the couple (then unmarried, which ruffled feathers locally) and a kitten. By now, they have a brood of children who get added to by large numbers of evacuees. We have lost the intimacy of the original, which truly felt like an us-against-the-world situation. Here, it is more about a community – the growing community of the home, but also connecting with the local Welsh people who are pleasingly welcoming to these outsiders.

I love reading about renovations and discovering new features of an old property. The gradual repair and extension of Castle Druid – the discovery of the cellar, the introduction of a waterwheel, even the digging of drainage ditches – is written with the same steady fascination of the previous books, and I always love Walmsley’s wonder at what can be created by diligent work, imagination, and hope. He isn’t brilliant at all the tasks he undertakes, and I think it’s the realism of the arduous labour and unexpected obstacles that stop this seeming self-congratulatory and smug (unlike this book, which has the most angry comments of any review I’ve ever written!) His self-deprecation helps make the simple idealism seem relatable – because I loved the way he and Dain enivsage an idyllic life. Here’s Dain:

“You’re making me homesick. Of course I remember. It was all so lovely. But so was Adder Howe, and so is this, really. If we haven’t got the sea, we’ve got the country, and if we make the lake, it will be almost as good as having the cove at our front door, especially if we have fish in it. And couldn’t we have some sort of a boat? We can swim in it in summer, and if there’s a shallow end with a sandy beach, the little children can have it for paddling. It will be perfect if we do get the waterwheel. I think that as well as using it for electricity, we ought to grind flour with it. If we grew just a little wheat, we could grind that, and actually make our own bread from start to finish. We could make oatmeal anyway, so that we wouldn’t have to buy it in the shops. It would all be helping with the war.”

Having said all of this, The Happy Ending has a relationship at its heart, and it isn’t between the narrator and Dain. The most dominant character is Clow. He is a local man who can turn his hand to everything, and instantly offers to work on the renovations for a modest wage for as long as it takes. He insists that Castle Druid would, by rights, belong to him and his sister – but seems to hold that against fate, rather than against the couple.

The narrator takes him on, and Clow is indeed invaluable – but he also has a pretty negative relationship with him. Clow takes charge of everything, giving unsolicited advice and taking credit for anything that goes well. If somebody else comes up with an idea, he says that he could have told them that, if he’d asked. The narrator is frustrated by how often Clow takes the most significant moments in the renovation to himself – and there is something quite childlike but touching about the way the narrator and Dain keep the possibility of the cellar secret until they can unearth it without his gaze.

I was fascinated by the dynamic. I’m not saying there was anything homoerotic about it, or anything like that, but there is an intensity to the way the narrator and Clow clash and depend on each other that drives much of the emotion of the novel. I wonder how much Clow was based on a real person, and if Walmsley ever truly worked out what they thought of each other.

Like the other books in the series, The Happy Ending is peculiar for its total humourlessness. That’s not a negative thing – it’s just that humour isn’t one of the tools in Walmsley’s arsenal. Nor is it earnest – it’s just presenting what happened in a steady, clear-eyed, almost loving way. To be self-deprecating without trying to be funny about it is very unusual, and quite disarming.

I think this is probably my least favourite of the trilogy, partly because it doesn’t have the intense insularity of the earlier books that made them so vivid – and partly because the narrator hardly does any fiction writing in this book, which was a central theme of the others. But that’s only by comparison. I still loved it, and love this special trilogy. If you’ve not read them, I urge you to start.

Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison #1952Club

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My post about Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison is going to be short – because what on earth was I thinking, back in 2012, when I bought this Virago Modern Classic? Well, maybe I’ve answered my own question there. It’s a VMC, it’s slim, it has a lovely cover. Maybe I figured all of that would help me overcome the fact that a book could hardly appeal to me less?

It’s a sort of fable about a girl called Halla in some sort of faux-medieval pan-Scandinavia setting. She is the daughter of a king but thrown out of home as an infant, and raised by bears.

And then a very fortunate thing happened. Matulli and her bear husband were walking through the woods, looking for the last of the wild bees’ honey or a late fledgling from a nest, and Matulli’s husband was grumbling away to himself because he could feel that the snow was not far off and it was time to go home to the den and sleep and sleep. But Halla was running around like a crazy butterfly and clearly had no intention of sleeping. Sometimes the he-bear thought it would be both nice and sensible to eat Halla, but he did not dare because of Matulli.

Yes, I enjoyed the knowing whimsy of that phrasing. Maybe I could cope with this book. But as it goes on, and we get through dragons and the Wanderer and having to do quests and whatnot, I got more and more bored.

Mitchison’s tone is a sort of wink-wink update of mythology, with the mythology taking over increasingly as the novella continues. I simply don’t care for this sort of book. Her writing is able, but I have no interest in fantastical lands and ancient pasts (whether real or imagined). I slogged my way through 138 pages, not caring what happened to anybody, and it’s going to a charity shop – from whence it will doubtless find a much more suitable home.

No club year would be complete without a few duds. I recognise the fault is with me, for trying something so very unlikely to appeal. But at least it has that lovely cover.

Don’t Look Round by Violet Trefusis – #1952Club

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There was a time when I would indiscriminately buy almost any book connected to the Bloomsbury Group. To a certain extent, that’s a book-buying era I’m still living – but I don’t seem to read them as voraciously as I used to. Still, I was glad to finally get to Don’t Look Round by Violet Trefusis, which I bought in 2011.

Violet Trefusis (also famed under her maiden name, Violet Keppel) is probably best remembered now for her long love affair with Vita Sackville-West, but that isn’t information you’ll get from this autobiography. Apparently Nancy Mitford once said that the book should be called ‘Here Lies Violet Trefusis’ – though I haven’t been able to find any source for that quotation – and there is a sense permeating Don’t Look Round that Trefusis is being cagey with the truth, if not outright dishonest. Indeed, the paragraph-long preface says ‘I have not lied, I have merely omitted, by-passed the truth, wherever unpalatable.’ And once you’ve accepted that, it’s a fun read on its own terms.

The thing that quickly becomes clear is that Trefusis is a very enjoyable writer and doesn’t mind poking fun at herself. She grew up in extraordinary privilege (which she takes for granted – there are stories of visiting relatives, all of whom seem to live in stately homes) but in other ways her experience of parental love is much the same as anybody else’s might be.

My parents spoiled me disgracefully. My mother began as an atmosphere, a climate, luminous, resplendent, joyously embattled like golden armour; it was only later that I became conscious of her as an individual.

I basked in the climate of her love without asking myself any questions, until I was about give. Very soon she hit upon the right technique in dealing with me. Once, when I was very small, and of the opinion that I was not getting enough attention, I announced that I was going to run away. “Very well, run then,” came the bland reply.

I started on a singularly flat fugue, pushing my little wheel-narrow in front of me. Nobody called. Nobody came. It was a complete fiasco. (In later life, other fugues were to be nipped in the bud by the same method.)

I love that bit in brackets at the end. Trefusis always writes with a wink. She might be coy in her autobiography, but it is a knowing coyness, that accepts a reputation she might have without being willing to add fuel to the fire.

Like so many autobiographies, the author has probably more interest in her childhood and youth than the reader does. I’m always impatient for them to get to the bits that actually made them famous. Trefusis’s stories from her early years are a combination of relatable and very much the reverse, and it’s all very enjoyable, but I wanted to get to the writing career – and this is something she writes surprisingly little about. She introduces her first novel as a sort of afterthought, that happened in the background of more significant events in her life, and races through Echo in a couple of pages (which I think is a marvellous novel). Others don’t seem to be mentioned at all. Perhaps this comes from humility, perhaps as a simple way of dodging how much the novels echoed (!) her own complex romantic life, from which she borrowed heavily.

But if she doesn’t write much about writing, she is very enjoyable on the literary scene. Trefusis has a talent for summing someone up in a handful of words – I noted down her description of Rebecca West, ‘who has a voice like a crystal spring and eyes like twin jungles’, which I thought oddly marvellous. She does write about Vita Sackville-West in a way that demonstrates her deep affection, even if she gives away little else. Her most moving descriptions are for her husband Dennys. Naturally, she does not write about the fact they apparently never consummated their marriage, or the reluctance with which they came together. Yet it is clear that there is regard rather than passion, and it is that regard which makes the most moving section of the book about Dennys’ early death.

In reading Don’t Look Round, though, the chief love affair of Trefusis’s life is clearly France. She lived there for a long time, and her first novels were written in French. Her passion for the language, history, sights and culture of France permeates a sizeable section at the centre of the autobiography. Even after moving back to England, at the outbreak of war, it feels like Trefusis has been forcibly removed from a lover.

Who would be in sympathy with one, who, though English and proud of it, looked upon England as exile? The only bone of contention between my darling mother and myself was France. She considered we had been let down disgracefully; the subject was taboo. I twisted this way and that, longing for some kind of outlet, someone with whom I would not have to conceal my yearning for France as though it were an unsightly disease.

And, similarly, there is more love and poignancy in her eventual return to France than in descriptions of many reunited lovers:

Hélène came to fetch me in a borrowed car. We drove around a miraculously intact Paris, more beautiful even than I remembered it. A great many of the houses were pitted with bullet holes. In the façade of the Ministère de la Marine a few balusters were missing, negligible, almost coquettish damage, like scratches received in a duel.

Trefusis’s love of France also leads to my real major qualm with Don’t Look Round. There is SO much untranslated French in this book. Whether quoting dialogue in France or expressing herself with French, Trefusis piles it on – probably a sentence or every page or two, particularly (of course) for the large section set in France. In my 1989 edition, there are no footnotes or translations anywhere. I have basic French, so could struggle through quite a lot of it, but there was plenty that I didn’t understand – and I’m sure the nuance of a lot of it was lost on me. In the 1950s, and the 198s0?, I suppose fluent French was taken for granted in readers – and if you can read French, then this is no drawback. But I found it pulled me out of the flow constantly, and even the bits I could understand took some time to piece together. If you don’t read French at all, it would be even more frustrating. Maybe more recent editions, if there are any, put the English in.

Trefusis would live another 20 years after Don’t Look Round was published, though she didn’t publish any more novels. If you’re looking for the unvarnished truth about her life, then look elsewhere – but if you want to enjoy the distinctively characterful and entirely selective memoirs of someone on the peripheries of the Bloomsbury Group, then this book is a fun and often moving read.

Fever of Love by Rosamond Harcourt-Smith – #1952Club

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Fever of love: Amazon.co.uk: Rosamond Harcourt Smith: Books

I’m always willing to take a punt on a cheaply priced mid-century novel by a British woman, and that’s how Fever of Love by Rosamond Harcourt-Smith ended up in my hands on a trip to Hay-on-Wye a while ago. That was despite a title that seemed quite melodramatically romantic, and quite an ugly cover of a faded flower against a grey background. But when I flicked through it, the writing seemed quite good – and I thought it was worth a shot. It might never have left my shelves, of course, if it weren’t for the club year getting it off my shelves.

My initial thoughts were that, yes, I could see why I’d picked it up. Harcourt-Smith writes wittily and well, clearly choosing her words carefully for their comic effect. Here’s one of the main characters, Virginia, going to a hairdressers:

When Mr Frank came back and started hacking about as if he were pruning a hedge, Virginia had no heart to remonstrate. All the other women in the saloon were pleading, arguing over every hair that fell, like money-lenders haggling about interest. Week after week these persecuted creatures sat for two hours or more while Arnolph’s assistants insulted, humiliated, bullied, but sent them home almost in tears of thankfulness at their own beauty. Put the customer in the wrong, give her the works, but fix her up looking a dream and she’ll come back for more. Arnolph had made a pile playing duets on the masochism and vanity of women.

Virginia and Jane are the main two women in the novel; Sebastian and Richard are the main two men. The gist of the plot is very simple. Virginia is married to sexy, thoughtless Sebastian; Jane is married to staid, dependable Richard. Both women are dissatisfied with their marriages and think that finding a more reliable (or, alternatively, more animalistically amorous) man would solve their problems – and, without realising the other is doing the same, they husband swap. (I’ve described the differences between Sebastian and Richard, which are obvious because they are so exaggerated – while Virginia and Jane get more space on the page and more attempts at psychology, I would struggle to define how they differ.)

Here is Virginia and Richard at the moment their affair begins:

Sebastian’s love-making was as formal as the peacock’s dance. Events followed each other with an order, a rhythm, which might have been taken from Kama Sutra. In these moments he resembled a brilliant tennis player winning a difficult match by never losing his head. The technique of love, the beauty of women, his own vigour, made love as he saw it a work of art as ordered as a great painting, a Bach concerto. Richard’s utter abandonment, his desire to immolate himself in his passion, struck Virginia as touching, unfamiliar. He knelt beside her in the hay, face transfigured, running his hands over the moulding of her body as though he himself had created it and found it his masterpiece. Like a Brahmin flinging himself beneath the Juggernaut’s car, he pressed his face against her body, eyes tight shut, here, there, losing himself in her. She lay quiet, caressing him where she could, his head, his shoulders; then as Richard’s mood of absement changed she felt as though she were sinking to the bottom of a pool, half suffocated by the sudden impact of his domination. Now she was the sacrificed, imprisoned in a bubble, drowning. Slowly the bubble began to rise up through the water-weeds, up, up, gathering speed until it reached the surface of the pool where it burst in a wide glitter of iridescent vapour. Then, as it seems drowning people feel, the suffocation cleared suddenly, leaving them floating, body to white body, drowned.

I thought that was exceptionally good writing, particularly about something as notoriously difficult to write as a sex scene. And it confused me a bit about the audience for this book – because the plot, and to a large extent the characters, are the schlocky sort of things you’d expect in a novel by Ethel M. Dell or Ruby Ayres – or whoever the 1950s equivalents of those early-20th-century powerhouses might be. But would someone looking for a racy, lowbrow romance (and no judgement if that’s what someone is after) really expect references to Bach and Brahmin in the middle of a love-making scene? And yet would someone looking for this richness in writing expect a plot as torrid as this husband-swapping one?

There isn’t much else to say about the plot, because it is just a protracted tale of adultery with some side characters thrown in. Nobody has any real moral compunction about cheating, or about cheating with the husband of a dear friend. And, I’ll be honest, I grew pretty bored of their assignations – but I kept reading for wonderful lines like this:

She had been four times married. Her first three husbands she wore as if they were expensive handbags – to be carried everywhere, insured against loss, locked up when not in use and lent to no third party.

And, as for the title – late in the novel, we learn what the simile is:

You loved deeply only once. The initial stages might be like some high fever, distracting you shamefully from your chosen route, distorting your life until you recovered or came to terms honourably – a field-marshal endorsing an armistice. Even then, like small-pox, it left you scarred, marked for life in fact. But one love, and one alone, did this to you, it could not happen twice.

I finished Fever of Love feeling very confused about what I thought. It’s rare to find a book where the writing is so much better than the characters or the plot. Adultery stories bore me at the best of times (it’s my main problem with writers like Margaret Drabble) and, even within an adultery storyline, Fever of Love would have been much more interesting if there had been more at stake – more moral questioning, or enquiry about what would happen to the women’s friendship. As it is, the characters feel quite flimsy, it’s hard to care what happens to any of them, and the story had cheap melodrama and yet no consequences. And yet, and yet, the writing was often so adept and so witty. I spent much of the time wishing Rosamond Harcourt-Smith had turned her evident talents to something more worthy of them.

If I ever stumble across another novel by her, I’d definitely snap it up. As for Fever of Love – I honestly can’t decide whether or not I’d recommend it someone. But if the quotes here appeal, then I recommend you keep an eye out.

A couple of #1952Club mysteries

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Almost any club year will have a host of vintage murder mysteries (and Neeru always comes up with some good candidates) – 1952 is no exception. I’m not sure when the Golden Age technically ended, so this is probably after that – the Silver Age? is that a thing? – but it has a lot in common with that era. Here’s a couple I read for this week…

Death Leaves A Diary by Harry Carmichael

I picked up Death Leaves A Diary for a pound somewhere in 2015, on the basis that any old hardback from The Crime Club is worth exploring. It turns out it’s the first of 41 books under the name ‘Harry Carmichael’, a pseudonym of Leopold Ognall who also wrote 44 books as ‘Hartley Howard’. Phew! It’s also the first to bring together the ‘detective’, an insurance assessor called John Piper, and a police offer called Quinn. If I’m honest, Quinn felt a relatively minor character and I didn’t sense all that much importance to their relationship with each other – but this page gives more info on their pairing. I was mostly amused that the detecting character shared a name with a notable theologian…

The opening line: ‘In the light streaming out of the doorway, the little man looked like a startled hare.’ John Piper is minding his own business when an old man, Fligg, beckons him in. With a mixture of kindness and curiosity, Piper follows. Fligg’s ground-floor flat, in an enormous block of hundreds of flats, has repeatedly been broken into. Nothing has been taken, and he’s never managed to disturb anybody in the act, but he is convinced that he is the target of break-ins. His proof? That his books have been rearranged:

He went hesitantly towards a tall narrow book-case alongside the bedroom door and fingered the binding of a few old books on one of the shelves. “Yes, yes! These are wrong. I always put them back in their proper order, and that’s how they were when I went out early this evening. Now they’re all mixed up. See?” He started to pull three or four volumes from the shelf, and Piper stopped him. “Couldn’t you be making a mistake?”

“No, that’s impossible. I’m always so particular. And everything in this room is like an old friend. I collect my treasures so that I’m surrounded with the rare and the beautiful.” He looked up at Piper with a strange light in his face. “They are my children. I know exactly where everything is, where I bought it, what is cost, and all about its history.”

Perhaps we can empathise! The police has dismissed Fligg as a bewildered nuisance, and Piper is tempted to do the same. He is sorry for the old man’s evidently genuine fear, but there doesn’t seem to be anything he can do. Until, not long later, he sees a small news item: Fligg has been found, hanged, in his home.

Somewhat unbelievably, the manager of the apartment building is willing to rent Fligg’s flat to Piper, including all of Fligg’s belongings – we move on, as we must swallow this detail, as well as Piper’s apparent ability to rent a flat at the drop of a hat without leaving his current home.

The books in his sitting-room help the answer to the riddle of his death. He had carefully replaced them in their proper order while Piper had watched him the night before. Only two volumes were left alone on the top shelf. Now, there were five – and three of them belonged with their fellows on the shelf below. Fligg had put them there – Piper had seen him with his own eyes.

Who had disturbed the books in Fligg’s book-case for the second time within a few hours? Why were they so important? Fligg had died because he had become involved in something in which he had no part. The little frightened mn had never climbed on to the footstool and fastened the cord of his dressing-gown round his neck. Someone had strung him up to die because… Piper didn’t know. But one thing he did know. That was murder.

And so the detection begins! It’s a fun journey, with Piper seeking out the origin of those books at a bookshop that is simultaneously shady and business-like – there are some funny moments where the proprietor interrupts threatening conversations to serve ordinary customers. He gets to know Fligg’s neighbours along the corridor, and the book is certainly packed with incident. At one point it felt like people were being attacked every few pages, and Carmichael is good at describing the intensity of these dangerous situations that makes Death Leaves A Diary feel a little more like a thriller than the usual Poirot-in-a-drawing-room puzzle novel.

Carmichael’s tone is really enjoyable. He’s a very able writer, giving a good sense of place – particularly Fligg’s crowded apartment – and does a nice line in humourous dialogue. Piper, for instance, is sharp-witted and uses sarcasm as part of his arsenal in dealing with people he doesn’t trust. I enjoyed this quick exchange:

“Let us not explore my affairs too closely, Mr –” He wrinkled his brows. “How silly of me! I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your name.”

“By a remarkable coincidence,” Piper said, “so have I.”

It’s a fun read, even if I didn’t spot that Quinn was a character of particular significance. And, come to think of it, I don’t think there was a diary at any point. Death Leaves A Diary is just a good title, I suppose.

The actual solution to the murder mystery doesn’t make an enormous amount of sense, and Carmichael widens the scope of the scheme so much that the initial set-up of Fligg’s faux-suicide in his messy room feels like a distant memory. I always prefer it when the mysteries are a little more domestic and restricted, but it didn’t particularly matter. What makes Death Leaves A Diary fun is the tone and Piper as a character. It’s a rattling adventure that doesn’t really satisfy anybody looking for an ingenius puzzle, but will totally satisfy the reader after an enjoyable tale – a rattling good yarn, intelligently told.

A Private View by Michael Innes

Another pseudonym for the second of the mysteries – Michael Innes is the name under which J.I.M. Stewart wrote crime fiction, and A Private View is somewhere in the middle of a series where John Appleby is the leading police detective – or, indeed, Assistant Commissioner. This series appeared from 1936 to 1986, so it’s an impressive pedigree and longevity – and this is the first I’ve read, which hopefully didn’t matter too much.

The private view of the title is of the ‘at an art gallery’ variety. Alleby is not to the manner born at a private view, but puts on a good face of being interested – and even going along with the conversation when it’s suggested that he might want to invest. Of particular interest is an abstract piece titled ‘The Fifth and Sixth Days of Creation’ by a little-known artist called Gavin Limbert. Midway through the exhibition, the painting goes missing…

I thought it might be a clever spin on the locked-room mystery – how does an enormous painting go missing in a packed gallery? – but sadly Innes tidies up this intriguing opening in a handful of words, and it certainly isn’t the main mystery of the book. Instead, they discover that Gavin Limbert’s recent death – initially thought to be suicide – is probably murder. And that’s when the mystery truly begins.

Perhaps one issue with joining a series detective this late in said series is that Innes doesn’t feel the need to introduce Appleby thoroughly. As such, I never really felt that I understood him. He’s certainly quite brusk when it comes to dead bodies, amusing on the topic of intellectual snobbery and Emperor’s New Clothes, and not reluctant to get into action. I did appreciate his relationship with his wife Judith, and enjoyed the section of the novel where she was centre stage the most.

What I really enjoyed about A Private View was the tone – there are some very funny exchanges, often with characters who topple over into grotesques:

“About the night of the police raid, Lady Clancarron.” Judith’s interruption was made in some haste. “Did you see anybody who might be described as a hunted man?”

“All men are hunted, child. By the Spectre of Vice.”

“Of course. But I mean an actually hunted man – one who looked as if he were in actual danger from some – some physical pursuit and assault.”

Meanwhile, Innes can’t help having some fun at the expense of modern art:

Appleby took a look. The picture space was entirely occupied by what appeared to be the representation of a work of statuary in an improbable green marble. The figure, a female one, was ingeniously contorted so as to provide the form of a solid cube; and the effect was the more striking in that the subject seemed to be an advanced case of dropsy complicated by elephantiasis. The upper limbs had approximately the same girth as the torso, and the neck had a greater circumference than the head. Appleby cast round for an appropriate word. ‘Chunky,’ he said.

The actual plot and solution take us into the realms of gangs and spies and all sorts of things I find much less interesting than domestic squabbles – and the tone is really more thriller than detective fiction. There is a solution at the end – which includes quite a lot of suspending disbelief – but I think Innes works harder at adrenaline-giving moments than he does at detective work. It’s not my favourite spin on this genre, but the amusing, sharp writing definitely helped.

Trial By Terror by Paul Gallico #1952Club

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Paul Gallico is one of the most varied writers I’ve encountered. Not just in terms of quality – though that’s probably true – but in terms of the types of books he writes. He’s perhaps best known in the blogging world for Flowers For Mrs Harris (also published as Mrs ‘arris Goes To Paris); in the wider world, it’s probably The Poseidon Adventure that is his biggest legacy, even if only for the film adaptations. But even there we can see his scope – from the whimsical story of a charlady buying a Christian Dior dress to a disaster narrative about a ship sinking. Along the way, Gallico writes fey stories of animals, ghost stories, dark stories of abuse, something akin to a detective novel, and more. Perhaps the most common thread is a fairy tale feel – whether that is the light, magical variety or the dark, unsettling side of the fairy tale world.

All of which is to say, when I bought Trial By Terror in 2016, I had no idea where it would fall on the Gallico spectrum. This pretty dreadful cover wasn’t very helpful. Penguin did some excellent covers in the ’60s and ’70s, but this was not among them. And, based on this cover, I assumed this was a horror novel of some variety. How wrong I was!

What Trial By Terror actually covers is very 1952: the early days of Hungary’s Communist state. Jimmy Race is an American reporter working for the Chicago Sentinel – specifically in their Paris office, though there is very little in the novel that gives any flavour of Paris. I suppose Gallico just needed the office to have a little more proximity to Hungary than would be found in Illinois.

Jimmy is a larger-than-life man – tall, bulky, flaming hair – and a total firebrand. When news breaks of a man ‘confessing’ to being a spy in Hungary, it is clear to all that the confession is, at the very least, coerced. Jimmy wants the newspaper to blast this on their front page, threatening retaliation to Hungary’s Communist regime – a much-feared but, in 1952, still relatively mysterious entity. And let’s just say he doesn’t take kindly to being counselled with caution.

“None of ’em have any guts, gimp, or gumption,” he continued. “They haven’t any competition and it’s made them all as soft as mush in the go-get-‘im department. They sit around on their hams and think because they’re getting out a rag in Paris instead of Kokomo they’re hot stuff. They can yawn themselves into their deadline and snooze themselves to press, and if they don’t go in on the button, so what? If anybody comes up with an idea there are five guys before Nick waiting to beat it to death before it can get around and cause them some inconvenience. And if it ever does get to Nick, he strangles it quick just in case it might hurt the feelings of some Frog sitting in the ministry or at the Quai d’Orsay. There isn’t a reporter or an editor on that sheet fit to be called a newspaperman.”

The ‘Nick’ mentioned is the head of the Paris office and the last in a line of editors who have the power to quash Jimmy’s enthusiastic ire before it gets to the page. One of the things I liked about Trial By Terror is that Gallico is generous to all his characters, and the reader knows that Jimmy’s assessment of Nick is unfair. There is no villain among the newspaper staff: we are invited to sympathise both with Jimmy’s righteous anger and Nick’s wise hesitance. Other characters include Nick’s clever, sophisticated wife, who co-manages the office, and the dowdy, devoted Janet whom Jimmy (of course) calls ‘kid’ and inadvertently strings along. I’d have happily read a whole novel set in this newspaper, and Gallico has set up a whole bunch of interesting dynamics.

But Jimmy certainly won’t stay put. He asks to go to Vienna for a story – and goes missing. He had previously told Janet that, given half the chance, he’d sneak into Hungary and expose the regime for what it is. And that’s exactly what he’s done.

From there, the novel goes back and forth between the Chicago Sentinel team desperately trying to work out what has happened to Jimmy – and to Jimmy’s ordeal in a Hungarian prison. He was caught immediately. He is not physically tortured, but kept in a bare cell and interrogated at irregular intervals. Without a watch or any predictable patterns to the day, he has no idea what time or even what day it is. The man who interrogates him most often – Mindszenty – does so with intense politeness, even a feigned reluctance to have to go through the process. He also (Jimmy sees) truly and irreversibly believes that Jimmy is a spy working for a foreign government, rather than a foolhardy journalist. Over and over, day after day, the questioning continues.

He [Jimmy] could consider man as a reasoning animal and therefore master of his wits and his tongue. He would have been willing to wager that while scientficically applied torture resulting in the destruction of bone and tissue might very well break him and lead him to admit to crimes he had never committed, a psychological or psychiatrical attack upon his mind and will could never lead to the same result. He believed one of two things: either Mindszenty and the others were mentally weaker than he or the enemy had discovered something entirely new and were applying heretofore unheard-of methods. Neither of these things was true, but by the time Jimmy was aware of it, it was also too late.

There is physical violence eventually, though thankfully it isn’t described too vividly. Gallico isn’t out to shock us. He is much more interested in the psychology of this sort of mental torture, and of the very believable way in which a strong-willed, passionate man will be worn down in ways he doesn’t suspect, or even fully realise is happening.

What prevents Trial By Terror from being a gruelling read, though, is the fact that we have the parallel story of the newspaper staff strategising to get Jimmy out. Some of that story is a little convenient, but enough of it is about character rather than plot that it doesn’t really matter.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed and appreciated this novel. I’m not sure how much Gallico could have known about what was really going on beyond the borders of Hungary, and there must be more accurately researched novels and non-fiction about the regime in that period, but I doubt anybody is going to read Trial By Terror as a piece of historical record. But the title and the cover also do the novel a big disservice. This is a very well-written character study of somebody caught in a creepingly terrible situation, and the impact on people who care about him. In 1952, it was Hungary. Today, it could be any number of other places. It shows a string to Gallico’s many-stringed bow that I didn’t know he had, and adds evidence to what an interesting and versatile author he was.